What are some key obstacles to affordable housing today?
For this weeks post I decided to ask the question to my mother and use her point of view. She has been my role model my entire life, there is no one I look up to more than her.
"As a mother and wife with 6 kids still at home moving and looking for a house big enough for my family is challenging. When we had to move to Colorado that was the hardest move I have ever had to deal with.
With marijuana being leagalized the price of property sky rocketed. It was so difficult to find a decent piece of property for a reasonable price.
The house we did end up moving into was beyond repair and the amount was still high and the property owner wanted to raise the amount. This house was not worth the amount the owner was asking, but I cannot let my family go without a roof over their heads.
What was happening was the marijuana merchants were using all the money they made from selling the drug and since they could only take cash for the sales they were buying a whole bunch of properties and turning around and selling the properties for outrageous amounts.
The trick was they knew people would still pay because they wanted to live in a state where the drug was legal to use.
Can you imagine the stress of trying to find an affordable house that wouldn't take all of your fathers paychecks to maintain and deal with 6 kids at the same time?"
My mother is an amazing woman for enduring all she does on a daily basis, if I could I would buy a house big enough for my entire family to live with me but I don't think my husband would like that to much.
SECOND STUDENT POST
Question #1
I was almost 30 when I had my first child. I was married, but my husband didn't work. My pregnancy was filled with issues, and my son was born a quadriplegic, mentally retarded (that term was used 30 years ago) and with Cerebral Palsy.
I had no idea what kind of housing was going to be needed, I just knew that it was my income that was now going to support the three of us. I had just moved to a large U.S. city and didn't anticipate that housing would be such an issue. As my son got older, his needs substantially increased, including the use of a wheelchair.
At that time, housing was not being constructed to accommodate wider doorways for access with wheelchairs. Additionally, affording housing on my income alone was very difficult to find. Because we could not afford much, household crowding was a problem and was very stressful.
The physical toll taking care of an invalid was very physically demanding and at times depressing; I was eventually diagnosed "Manic Depressive".
My husband was not handling the situation well, either. He became very aggressive, eventually physically hitting me. If that wasn't enough, I now found myself experiencing discrimination because I had a family member in a wheelchair. And, because of the neighborhood we were forced to live in, crime was right out our back door, literally.
I grew up in a middle-income family, an average family by most standards.
The birth of my son threw me into a world of discrimination, physical abuse, and serious depression. On top of it all, I needed a job that would allow for time off, as needed, to properly take care of my son. The world was not the pretty picture my mother painted it to be.
I dug in and my faith is what carried me through many years of hardship. Over the years, I have been able to provide what my family needs and take care of my son properly.
With the Affordable Housing Act in 1991 to accommodate disabilities and FMLA in 1993, we were finally able to relocate to decent housing and have time off to care for my son, without fear of losing my job. Life hasn't been easy, but it has been worth the heartaches and the obstacles. Charlotte, NC